Lacan, Politics, Aesthetics

Edited by Willy Apollon & Richard Feldstein

Subjects: Psychoanalysis
Series: SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
Paperback : 9780791423721, 341 pages, January 1996
Hardcover : 9780791423714, 341 pages, January 1996

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction I

Richard Feldstein

Introduction II

Willy Apollon

the politics of desire

The Fetish of the Party
Slavoj Zizek

A Lasting Heresy, the Failure of Political Desire

Willy Apollon

Subject of the Gaze for Another Gaze

Richard Feldstein

jouissance, desire, and the law

Facing Fascism: A Feminine Politics of Jouissance
Juliet Flower MacCannell

A Verdict on the Paternal Function:

Law, the Paternal Metaphor, and Paternity Law

Judith Roof

the politics of mastery

The Discourse of the Master

Ellie Ragland

literary representation

Othello's Lost Handkerchief:

Where Psychoanalysis Finds Itself

Elizabeth J. Bellamy

Reading Hamlet with Lacan

Bruce Fink

Kundera and Lacan: Drive, Desire, and Oneiric Narration

Maire Jaanus

Fatal Conjunctions: Gendering Representations of Death
Elisabeth Bronfen

graphic representation

Dali and Lacan: Painting the Imaginary Landscapes

Hanjo Berressem

musical representation

Orpheus and Eurydice: Muses of Music

Peter Widmer

filmic representation

Aliens and the Psychotic Experience

Danielle Bergeron

Aliens or Staging the Trauma

Lucie Cantin

cross-genre representation

Lost Objects: Duras's Minimalist Cinema of Remembrance

Catherine Portuges

Index

This is an anthology of psychoanalytic criticism applied to the wider field of cultural studies including class, gender, representation, ideology, and law.

Description

In this volume, psychoanalysts, cultural theorists, and literary critics demonstrate the relevance of the unconscious economy to the field of cultural studies, applying psychoanalytic criticism to political and aesthetic issues related to the legal and ideological superstructure of contemporary society. These writers have adopted a variety of rhetorical positions when engaging cultural issues that deal with representation, ideology, class, and gender. Contributors include Willy Apollon, Richard Feldstein, Slavoj Zizek, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Judith Roof, Ellie Ragland, Elizabeth J. Bellamy, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, Elizabeth Bronfen, Hanjo Berressem, Peter Widmer, Danielle Bergeron, Lucie Cantin, and Catherine Portuges.

Willy Apollon is a psychoanalyst at GIFRIC in Quebec. Richard Feldstein is Professor of English at Rhode Island College. He is co-editor of Reading Sminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: The Paris Seminars in English, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"What I like most about this book is its demonstration of the importance and breadth of Lacan's thought. These papers take up Lacan's invitation to engage his texts as he did Freud's, not out of passive discipleship but out of a shared conviction of the consequences of the work of psychoanalysis, that after Freud nothing is quite the same. " — Michael Payne

"The collection demonstrates the relevance and potential of Lacanian theory beyond specifically psychoanalytic concerns to the wider field of cultural studies. The essays dealing with ideology break ground in their approach to political issues. The collection, taken together, stimulates thought. " — Janet Thormann Mackintosh